The Empty Cup
by idealskeptic
Summary: Charlie Swan didn't have his daughter for long. After her wedding, he's desperate to hold on to anything that reminds him of her because he knows he might not have her anymore. The thing that breaks him, the thing that makes Charlie Swan cry? An empty purple cup. Angst. Canon.


**I own nothing related to this whatsoever.**

**A Note From Me: **This is another prompt from my ill-fated attempt to do the PTB challenge. I wrote it so why not post it, right?

Anyway, it's angsty… possibly very angsty.

The prompt was: **EMPTY CUP**

* * *

**The Empty Cup**

Charlie sighed as Renee told Phil, for the sixth time, all the things that hadn't changed in the house since she left. It was obvious Phil felt uneasy but Charlie just wanted her to shut up and go away, simple as that. He couldn't help but worry that she could see how much he still loved her, how much he'd loved her for two decades, even after she made it so very clear she didn't love him. He felt pathetic.

"Why don't we head back to the hotel?" Phil suggested when she started to head for the kitchen, explaining why she'd painted the cupboards the sunny yellow color that now looked, to Charlie, so faded and sad. "We have an early day and a long flight tomorrow."

Renee agreed reluctantly and started saying goodbye to Billy and Sue, who'd come back from the Cullen house with them. Phil sighed wearily and turned to Charlie. "Sorry about all this. I know today's been rough for you."

"Mm-hmm," he grunted in vague agreement. "You don't have to apologize, though. It's not your fault."

"I know, but still." Phil reached out and tugged on his wife's arm. "It was good to finally meet you, Charlie."

Charlie shook his offered hand and gave Renee a cursory hug. "Have a safe, good trip back to Florida, you two."

He let them see themselves out.

"We should go too," Billy said, nodding toward Sue and then looking back at his old friend, "or we can stay if you want us to."

Charlie mashed the heel of his hand into his face and sighed. "No, you'd better go see where Seth ended up when he disappeared from the reception. Thanks for coming today. I know you two don't like the Cullens much so I really do appreciate it."

Sue squeezed his hand. "We're only a phone call away if you need us, Charlie."

He thanked them again and helped get Billy into the car and the wheelchair into the trunk so Sue wouldn't risk damaging her dress. He waited until Sue's car disappeared from sight and then, reluctantly, we went back inside his house.

He'd shed the suit jacket Alice had assigned him long ago and the tie was already draped haphazardly on the banister. He unbuttoned the stiff white shirt and slid it off, trading it for a faded flannel shirt he found folded in a basket on the washing machine. He went to the kitchen and got a can of Vitamin R from the fridge, and tried not to let his eyes linger on the prepared food stacked so neatly in carefully labeled plastic containers. He vaguely remembered eating at the reception but he didn't know how much. He wasn't hungry, though, and shut the door as soon as the can was safely in his hand.

He went back to the living room and turned off the light someone had turned on. Sitting in the dark seemed much more conducive to wallowing in self-pity. And that was exactly what he intended to do.

He stayed there, not drinking the beer he never put down, until three in the morning. That seemed to him to be as good a time as any to go upstairs and switch from sitting in the darkness to lying in the darkness.

The only light in Bella's bedroom was coming in through the window. The moonlight fell on her bed, outlining the fact that she wasn't sleeping there anymore. Instinctively, he hurried across the room and pulled the curtains closed, shrouding the room in darkness. He left again, pulling her door shut and murmuring an unheard 'goodnight' to the daughter he'd barely had the chance to know.

He loved her, though, and he missed her deeply even though she'd only been gone a few short hours.

It was like that day Renee took her away all over again.

Charlie went into the bathroom then and traded the rest of his clothes for pajamas. He brushed his teeth and stared at himself in the mirror while he did it. He looked old, even to himself. Maybe more to himself. The streaks of gray were starting to show up more and more in his hair and the bags under his eyes didn't help at all. He rinsed his mouth and stuck his toothbrush back in the holder.

That's when he saw it.

The tiny, battered purple cup with white flowers that sat on the edge of the sink.

Bella had been three when she found it at a yard sale, just old enough to brush her own teeth, and she'd stubbornly insisted that she have the cup for the bathroom. In fifteen years, the cup had never left his bathroom. It sat on the shelf sometimes, when she wasn't there. But when she was there, it was on the sink.

Charlie knew that she'd never need her little purple cup again. She wouldn't need to rinse out her mouth after she brushed her teeth. She wouldn't need to fill it up to swallow pills or just to get a drink of water.

The sight of that cup, that empty cup was too much. He started to cry.

He slid down with his back against the bathtub and he cried while he held the little cup in his hands.

He knew it was stupid, really, for a grown man who'd just seen his daughter married to be reduced to tears over a secondhand, empty cup. But he couldn't help it. He wanted so badly for his little girl to need that cup again. He wanted to go back in time and see her stomp her little foot, nearly toppling over in her clumsiness as she demanded that she have the cup for her very own.

To the world, it was an empty cup.

To Charlie, it was the painful, heartbreaking end of a childhood.

He didn't pull himself together until dawn broke. He was a little worried that Renee would come back and he didn't want her to see him that way so he showered and dressed, looking as good as he could.

And then he tucked the little purple cup into the box where he kept all the things Bella didn't need anymore.


End file.
